Metropolitan Room booking manager Tanya Holt made an excellent decision by booking Jazz and Pop vocalist Tanya Holt for two appearances beginning last evening in the Metropolitan Room at 34 West 22nd Street. Ms. Holt who has done a superb job in helping make the venue one of New York’s foremost cabarets, also happens to be a uniquely voiced jazz vocalist who not only can swing but can move you when she sings a ballad. Her voice is like no other, perhaps slightly reminiscent of Eartha Kitt, with whom Ms. Holt shares a sense of sensuality, when she is performing.
Her show Forever Home is indeed a mix of swinging, funny and sad songs by composers as diverse as Clyde Otis, Dinah Washington, Leonard Bernstein, Ray Noble and Jerome Kern. Her facial expressions and hand movements make her a performer whom you cannot take your eyes off. She opened the show exuberantly with Joe Greene’s Make Me a Present of You. She then did a very funny segue from The Very Thought of You to Daddy O. She had the audience laughing with I Can Cook Too and then crated a very different emotion with her dramatic Gotta Move. Ms. Holt showed off her chops as a jazz vocalist with her scat singing while performing Pick Yourself Up.Her closing number was a very warm rendition of Hoagy Carmichael and Ned Washington’s The Nearness of You. Upon closing, the celebrity filled audience roared their approval.
Tanya Holt will perform the show again at the Metropolitan room on Thursday March 14 at 7 PM.
